


Death of me

by Nival_Vixen



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Angst with a Happy Ending, Apocalypse, BAMF Derek, BAMF Derek Hale, BAMF Stiles, Bicycles, Canon-Typical Violence, Complete, Derek Takes Care Of Stiles, Emissary Stiles Stilinski, Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Torture, Light Angst, M/M, Minor Violence, Morally Ambiguous Stiles Stilinski, Poisoned Derek, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Zombie Apocalypse, Protective Derek, Protective Stiles, Stiles Takes Care Of Derek, Stiles Uses A Baseball Bat, Survival, Vampires, Werewolf Derek, Wolf Derek, Wolf Derek Hale, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombie Hunters, really light
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-11
Updated: 2014-12-11
Packaged: 2018-03-01 01:30:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2754533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nival_Vixen/pseuds/Nival_Vixen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek always said that Stiles would be the death of him.</p><p>Stiles always replied 'only if you ask nicely'.</p><p>Before now, Stiles had only ever meant it as a joke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Death of me

Derek always said that Stiles would be the death of him.

Stiles always replied 'only if you ask nicely'.

Before now, Stiles had only ever meant it as a joke.

...

These days, Derek runs in his wolf form. He says it's easier to smell any hunters, any shredders, any houses that - by a miracle itself - still has something edible inside of it. Stiles has a bicycle. It's not the fastest form of transportation, but now that fuel is non-existent (and where it can be found, it's bartered for things that he's not willing to trade), it's sure as fuck faster than his own walking or running speed.

They're still not sure where they're heading, whether there's anywhere left to go to, now that their pack's ... _gone_. They don't really talk about it, just keep on cycling, keep on running, and when Derek does turn back to his human self during the night, they eat and fuck and sleep in shifts, keeping the other safe. They trust one another, but it's not complicated, there's no room for anything else inside of them to let it be complicated, not anymore.

Any humanity Stiles had was torn out of him when his Dad was killed by a shredder, when Scott was beheaded by a hunter, when Lydia was ... no, best not to think about it. Derek had held onto his humanity the longest, and there's times when Stiles thinks that maybe the werewolf is better at being human than he is. Derek still hesitates when he has to kill a child shredder, even though the thing's trying to kill the both of them, trying to tear them to pieces and eat their insides. Compassion and hesitation is what's going to get them killed out here. Stiles has neither.

During the full moon is the only time Derek allows himself to let loose. He runs all day and night as a wolf, howling if they're far enough from any kind of civilisation. He might let loose, but he's not stupid, and Derek refuses to put Stiles at risk like that. The night of the full moon is the only night of interrupted sleep Stiles ever gets these days, and while he stays awake the night after to give the same to Derek, he's usually still too keyed up to sleep for long.

Stiles has become far too accustomed to eating dried jerky. Rabbit, deer, beef gotten from god knows where; anything that Derek can take down with claws and teeth, Stiles then works on drying and preparing for food. It's something to gnaw on during the day, ignore the pangs of hunger (he would kill for curly fries; he's killed for far less by now), maybe even trade if the people they come upon don't seem too shady. After one elderly woman tried to beat Stiles to death with her walking stick just for the bag of jerky he had on his back, he's more than content to let Derek do the growling over-protective thing he does and scare anyone from getting too close. It's far easier to exchange things when there's some sort of distance between them; one person drops their thing to the ground, the other does the same, and they circle around until they've got what they want and can continue on their not-so-merry way.

It's been almost four years, and with the living desperate to fight to stay that way, the shredders are fewer and fewer between. The dead outweigh the living, always have and will, it seems, but the living have fought back enough that the initial days of fighting shredders for their ongoing survival are far and few between now. Sometimes there'll be anomalies, with the cities more often than not still overrun by shredders because no one's stupid enough to take that on and think they would survive. Other times, it will be an entire week before Stiles and Derek come across anyone - dead or alive.

It's only after Stiles realises that they've been travelling for almost three straight weeks without seeing any shredders that he thinks maybe the the worst is over now, maybe they can stop and live instead of just surviving. The thought almost sends him head over handlebars. He skids to a stop, looking ahead to the road he's got to weave between cars and trucks and whatever else, then back to the one he's just navigated. Derek jumps up on top of a car, sniffing and trying to figure out what's wrong.

"We haven't seen a shredder in a while, Der," Stiles says; he likes to talk to Derek, even if he can't respond in this form. It helps him keep what's left of his sanity, or at least, Stiles likes to think it does.

Derek gives a whine, and kind of frowns.

"Think it might be over? They could all be dead now, really dead this time. We could stop?" he adds, posing it more as a question.

Derek whines slightly again, but before Stiles can say or do anything, the whine turns to a low growl, and it's one he's all too familiar with. It's a warning growl: shredders nearby.

"Shit, shit, shit," Stiles curses under his breath, putting his feet back on the pedals and pedalling as fast as he possibly can.

It was stupid to stop, even more stupid to stop on a road like this, and if he gets torn to pieces by a fucking shredder _now_ , after all of this time, Stiles is going to kick his own ass to the afterlife.

Derek's leaping from car to car, running alongside him, then he turns around abruptly, and Stiles skids to a stop. The shredder's about average height, has already had some damage to it, but there's a low filtering moan coming from behind the shredder that makes Stiles' skin prick with fear. The shredders must have been hiding in the forest, waiting for some idiot to stop in the middle of the road and think it was all over.

 _What the hell was he thinking? Why didn't he see the amount of cars littering the road and realise that not all of these shredders had left? Fuck, he's an idiot, and he might as well have just killed the both of them in the last fucking town. Fuck, fuck, fuck_.

Before Stiles can call out to Derek, to tell him to just keep fucking running - the wolf can escape, Stiles can't - Derek leaps for the first shredder and tears it to pieces in a second. Stiles swears under his breath, throwing the bike to the side as he runs over, pulling his modded baseball bat out of the case on his back. It's got nails crudely hammered in, he finds it makes it easier to rip apart someone's skull than a thick block of wood, and it's harder for the humans to grab ahold of too. The second and third shredders are down with his bat, and from there it's a frenzy of blood and moans and howling. Stiles gets pretty caught up in the fight, every thought leaves his mind, and he experiences a calm that not even Adderall had provided him with; he has nothing but his fighting instincts and his bat.

There's another howl, this one a different variety to Derek's usual sound, and Stiles is brought out of his zen abruptly to see a shredder burying its ugly, clawed, meaty hands into Derek's chest. He must be tired if he's turned back to a beta in the midst of it all, Stiles thinks vaguely. Derek can heal from the shredders' attacks, but it's still a painful experience. He rips the shredder's arms off before throwing them to the side and clawing the shredder's face off a second later. Stiles turns back to his fight, thinks that the bodies are piling up enough that they might be able to escape after all, and yells as much to Derek.

"Get the bike!" Derek yells back.

Stiles smacks down one last shredder and hauls ass over to his bike. He's already got a leg over it, calling out to Derek. Two more shredders go down with his claws, then Derek's running, and Stiles is pedalling harder than he has before. His legs burn, his arms hurt, his crotch hits the seat like ten fucking times, but he doesn't stop, just keeps riding until long after the cars and trucks have cleared, and he can taste blood in his mouth instead of saliva.

When it's safe to stop running and slow to a fast walk instead, they head to the nearest house that's away from the road. They pass two houses, even though it's getting dark, Derek just shakes his head at them, and by now, Stiles knows better than to question his nose. Finally, Derek stops at a small property that he deems will be safe. It's new on the inside, an old barn-type house that's been remodelled and decorated, probably by some yuppie family that moved out of the city and thought their troubles would be over now that they were in the country. _Good luck with that_ , Stiles sneered to himself. The place still has its original rafters, high up in the ceiling, and Stiles props the bike up beside the door before clambering up (with Derek's help) to get up to them. Satisfied that he's safe, Derek heads through the house looking for clothes or food. Now that the adrenaline's worn off, Stiles is exhausted, and it's only the fact that Derek's not with him that keeps him awake.

Derek returns with two jumpers and a pair of shorts. It's not much, the sizes aren't the best fit, but it's sure as fuck better than nothing. He's up in the rafters with Stiles a second later, and they eat their beef jerky slowly, Derek holding Stiles up as they both fall asleep. It's not much, but they're alive, they're still together, and that's enough for them.

Stiles is woken by two gunshots. He flails, forgetting where he is for a moment, and almost falls out of the rafters. He does this all without a sound - he's had years of practice, after all - but thankfully, Derek grabs him before he can fall and hauls him back up onto the rafter. Derek points down to one of the windows in the wall opposite them, and Stiles blinks, frowning as he tries to see what's going on. He can see a woman putting more bullets into a barrelled shotgun, and she's yelling something towards the forest.

"You try and come back here, you assholes! I'll kill all y'all; don't think I won't! I've got enough bullets to send every single one of ya back to hell!"

The woman keeps the shotgun up and poised, ready to shoot, but then seems to think the threat's gone, and turns back to the house, heading inside without looking up. Stiles thinks that they're safe, they can climb down and escape when she's gone, and almost sighs in relief.

"You two can get the fuck outta my rafters too, y'all look like a buncha pigeons."

The woman, as they find out, is a vampire. In a world of werewolves, kanimas, werejaguars, Oni, kitsunes and nogitsunes, not to mention the shredders that brought all of that supernatural shit right out into the open, Stiles is surprised to find that he's still surprised by the presence of vampires. The woman seems to have a sense of humour and calls herself Anne when Stiles and Derek give obviously false names. Apparently Anne was involved with a witch back in the day, one who gave her the gift of being able to walk around in the sunlight without the extra crispiness on the side. Of course, shredders destroying the world three years after the gift had been bestowed upon her had kind of put a damper on things, but Anne smirks when she says that she can still kill the bastards for ruining what was meant to be her retirement.

Derek doesn't trust Anne as much as Stiles wants him to, and while that puts Stiles on edge as well, he can't help but trust his werewolf. They've come through too much to not be cautious, after all. Anne lets them eat - she hid food behind a bag of rotting mushrooms, which is enough to put anyone off, let alone a werewolf. Later, she shows them where the bath tub is and even brings buckets of water up for them to bathe for the first time in way too long. Stiles is almost ready to confess his undying love (ha!) for Anne just for the prospect of clean water. (Derek fills their bottles with water before he lets either of them step into the tub, and as soon as he's finished, Stiles washes himself briefly before he guides Derek into the water so he can clean him properly and give him a blowjob out of pure happiness. It's the best bath he's had in years.)

Of course, the other shoe drops in a spectacular fashion. Anne refuses to let them leave. She's a vampire in a world where humans are no longer blindly trusting, and she's been feeding off the shredders that came close. Stiles vaguely realises that the shredders weren't hiding in the forest waiting for their next meal, they were hiding to avoid becoming the next meal. It's a sobering thought, realising that he's dumber than a goddamn shredder.

Stiles doesn't blame Derek for this one bit, he should have recognised the runes and sigils on the doorways sooner, ones for trust and acceptance, ones to lure in the weak and tired, or the ones that had just fought for their lives and were exhausted to the point where any emotional manipulation would have worked. _Fuck, he's so stupid to have let them get caught like this! And to think, he'd entertained thoughts of stopping and living, rather than just surviving. He's an idiot, and he's going to have his blood drained dry by a vampire because of his own damn stupidity_.

Anne has them both on the ground before they can do anything; the water must have had something in it, because Derek's eyes are glowing a bright red. He's staring at his claws with a furrowed expression, as if he's trying his damnedest to get them to become fingers again. Anne just smiles and leads them both over to the chair where she ties them up. She plans on slicing Stiles up, letting him heal before taking more blood, and _press repeat_. She can store blood, apparently, so Stiles expects to live for a while at least, even if it's going to be bloody and painful.

"A werewolf, however, I have no need for. They heal far too quickly, you see; no blood produced when they heal. Besides all that, they taste like dog," Anne adds, wrinkling her nose.

Stiles rolls his eyes and desperately tries to think of a way out of this. He still feels a little out of it, but he was out of the water longer than Derek, and Stiles kind of hopes he'll regain his senses sooner rather than later. Anne seems to underestimate him, thinks that Derek's been the fighting force behind his survival, and it's almost a relief to discover that people's misconceptions of him don't change, even when they've been part of the horde of the undead for the last however-many years. To her, all he's got to offer is his blood, his face, and maybe his brain ( _he doesn't know how vampires get their blood, okay? And he's sure as fuck not going to ask and tempt her even more_ ). Unless Stiles' fifth birthday wish for telekinesis suddenly comes true and he can his baseball bat to smash her brains in, all he's got is his own brain against her. It's probably not much in the grand scheme of things, but it's more than he's had against others too.

"Now, to start slicing you open. It will be a small cut, first. Just to get your blood really going, then I'll work my way up from there," Anne murmurs, caressing his arm almost reverently.

_Shit, shit, not good, seriously not good. Think, brain, think!_

"Bite me," Stiles spits, hoping to stall for time while his genius brain gets going.

Anne falters, frowning at him. "What?"

"Bite. Me," Stiles repeats, slowly and drawn out.

An idea is forming in his head. It's bad - like, on a scale of _not too bad, I might survive_ to _this is seriously fucking bad, we're all going to die_ , it rates as a _we're all already dead, why the fuck not?_ which fucking breaks the scale, it's so bad. But then, Stiles has a severely limited range of options here, starting and ending with this half-assed idea in his head. While Derek's snarling, tied up in the chair behind him, it doesn't sound like a very healthy snarl, and there's not a whole lot of heat behind it, considering Stiles is about to be turned into a vampire's open faucet. Stiles really hopes that the water isn't killing Derek, because to survive this long only to be taken out by drugged water is a seriously shitty way to die.

Anne seems to be contemplating his idea, a bit too long for Stiles' liking - he's got his plan formed and he wants to kick it into action sooner rather than later, thank you very much - so he decides to goad her into it. His hands are tied behind his back, but his nails are sharp enough to gouge a few small marks into his skin, and he can tell the moment his blood oozes up out of his hand. Anne goes still, nostrils flaring and eyes wide, and behind him, Derek goes just as still as well.

"Come on, just one taste. What's the harm, huh? It's not like I'm going anywhere; you'll have the rest of me to slice 'n' dice after just one bite."

Anne licks her lips, eyes firm on his jugular, and then she practically dives for his neck, fangs sinking down into his skin. It's not a pleasant feeling, it rips a roar of pain from him in fact, and Stiles almost forgets his plan all together, just to scream and beg for mercy. He remembers himself in time though, and as Anne's drinking his blood, he pushes his own will on to her, making her give in to the urge to turn him into a vampire, just like her. She struggles, but he's got a fuckload of imagination, especially when it comes to saving Derek and himself. Besides all that, Anne's hungry, thirsty, _desperate_ for blood that's not been stored away, and she keeps on drinking, offering Stiles her arm almost in a daze. He bites back a grimace, tries not to throw up at the mere thought of what he's about to do, and bites into her skin.

The taste gets better, marginally, and by the time Stiles can feel his body changing, Anne's lying weak beside his chair. He's drained her dry instead of letting her do the same to him, and Stiles isn't sad in the slightest to see that she's dying. He watches as she dies (again?), her body falling in a heap and her bones sticking out. It's gross more than anything, really. Stiles pulls on the ropes that bind his hands together, and they fall apart like silk. Grinning, he stands, and lifts Derek as easily as if he was a small child. Derek whimpers a bit in his embrace, but Stiles just holds him a bit tighter and continues out of the house. His initial theory was right - his will to be a vampire like Anne included the ability to be in the sunlight - and he doesn't burst into flame when they're outside.

He walks along the road, and though Stiles can see the shredders in the trees on either side of him, they don't try to attack. Derek's exhausted in his arms, sleeping fitfully, and Stiles doesn't stop walking until they're well and truly safe, not another soul to be seen.

...

Derek wakes up, his nose assaulted by the _smells_ , by the scent of death that clings to Stiles, the blood that still stains his chin, and the emotion he can still smell somewhere beneath the scent of salt and copper.

"You're not afraid of me now, are you, Derek?" Stiles asks softly, standing a few paces away.

Derek shakes his head briefly. He wasn't the first wolf to run away from a fox, and he wouldn't be the first to run from a vampire either.

"You'll still stay with me, even though I'm ... this, now?" Stiles asks, gesturing to himself.

"Yes. You're pack, I'll... I'll get used to the smell in a few weeks. The full moon will help, if you'll run with me," Derek replies, a little hesitantly.

He doesn't know how much of Stiles is left inside of the vampire, and is worried that there won't be much remaining of the Stiles he knows and has come to love. Still, Stiles' responding smile is bright and looks almost normal, if a little _sharper_.

"You know what this means now?" Stiles asks, sounding practically gleeful.

A few hundred responses run through Derek's mind - can keep each other safe now, they don't have to worry about shredders, something along those lines - but he shakes his head and shrugs.

"We can have seriously rough sex now, you don't have to hold back on me anymore. Don't say that you haven't held back, 'cause we both know that's a lie," Stiles adds.

 _Of all the things_... Derek shakes his head again and laughs this time. Maybe he doesn't have to worry about Stiles not being _Stiles_ as much as he feared.

"I swear, Stiles, you're going to be the death of me."

"Only if you ask nicely," Stiles replies, with a broad smile full of sharp teeth.

It's the first time Derek's believed him.

...

The end.

Thanks for reading!


End file.
